In the 1960s when I was a younger teenager in Montreal, skinny and flat-chested,
yé-yé was the music of the francophone boys I hung with. Acts like Les Classels, Les Baronets, César et les Romains, Les Sultans, Les Excentriques, Les Miladys, Tony Roman and Jenny Rock were hot. French kids watched them on
Jeunesse d'aujourd'hui. English speaking girls were exposed to them in the pool halls and on the street corners where the guys with
ducktail haircuts played them on their transistor radios.
These guys (Les Classels) had a unique look. They were a little before my time but some of my less cool friends liked them.
Then there were the bands that did cover versions of the English top ten. This group (César et les Romains) had hit after hit. Go figure.
And these guys! If the Quebec pop scene needed anything it was definitely not dudes doing The Freddy en francais.
Bang bang, somebody should have shot this song down when Cher did it.
At some point local anglo groups appeared. Maybe they were always there and all it took was a move to an English speaking neighbourhood for me to discover them. By this time I was old enough to go out and wait (often in vain) for guys to ask me to dance. I hated those days but I really loved this band:
The Rabble was arguably the best of the Montreal bands of this era although some of their songs like Black Potato and Can I Squeeze Your Boil were a little weird even for the times.
The group singing The Freddy is called Les Baronets and the singer on the left is René Angelil, much better known as Céline Dion's manager and husband. :)
ReplyDeleteSo that's where he got his start...
ReplyDeleteThis is very cool. I've heard of yé-yé but only through an early 21st century electronic music fad. This is all new to me.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to have to look up this Can I Squeeze Your Boil song.
I had trouble keeping this short. I could have gone on and on.
ReplyDelete